Socratic Seminar, 10/12

For the seminar, I felt these were some of the more interesting selections from the reading.


1) Freire, The Banking Concept of Education (paragraph 35)
“Education as the practice of freedom—as opposed to education as the practice of domination—denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent, and unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as a reality apart from men. Authentic reflection considers neither abstract man nor the world without men, but men in their relations with the world. In these relations consciousness and word are simultaneous: consciousness neither precedes the world nor follows it.”

This should be one of the key focuses when putting together not only lesson plans but in the creation of your teaching method, if we are to build students toward becoming well-balanced socially-minded community members we must show them that they are in fact a part of a greater “machine” as it were, and that they in their own right are responsible for not only themselves but also that their actions will make a difference regarding their surroundings.

Question on the reading: In paragraph 19 Freire states, “Verbalistic lessons, reading requirements, the methods for evaluating ‘knowledge,’ the distance between the teacher and the taught, the criteria for promotion: everything in this ready-to-wear approach serves to obviate thinking.” In your experience, is this statement true about the kinds of education you have had, and if so, is it more true of any specific level?

2) Gardner, The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (paragraph 16)
“Having sketched the characteristics and criteria of an intelligence, we turn now to a brief consideration of each of the seven intelligences. We begin each sketch with a thumbnail biography of a person who demonstrates an unusual facility with that intelligence. These biographies illustrate some of the abilities that are central to the fluent operation of a given intelligence. Although each biography illustrates a particular intelligence, we do not wish to imply that in adulthood intelligences operate in isolation. Indeed, except for abnormal individuals, intelligences always work in concert, and any sophisticated adult role will involve a melding of several of them. Following each biography we survey the various sources of data that support each candidate as an “intelligence.”

Under this theory, we as teachers must not assume that all children will have the same concept of learning, or have the same level of understanding when using any one teaching technique. He goes on to explain that where there may be those that those children that may thrive in learning from linguistic methods, another may find spatial or interpersonal methods of learning to be more conducive to them. We must always have several different ways of teaching to accommodate all of the students in class.

Question on the reading: Gardner asks “What Constitutes an Intelligence?” After reading this essay, how would you answer that question?

3) Elbow, The Danger of Softness (page 205)
“For me, then, the conference ended with an important subtheme—ended by sticking up for a side of the profession that often gets lost in high school and college English departments: play, storytelling, the personal, amateur, imaginative, affective, and informal. I’m not saying that the profession suffers from too much of what is professional, cognitive, analytic, and pragmatic; there can’t be too much of those good things—only too little of the other side. Nothing need be lost, but something needs to be gained.”

This is what I’ve always feared going into teaching, where the content becomes so rigid and strict that all the fun of literature is leeched out of it for the students. This explains that you don’t have to go fully to the inane, ridiculous side of teaching where you become corny or amateur in your teaching, but there really should be more of a balance between that of professionalism and fun in the classroom.

Questions on the reading: How could you take a lesson (say, on The Scarlet Letter) and while trying to format a day’s class activity on symbolism and vocabulary, create a balance between the professional act of teaching the material and make it fun for the students at the same time?

If in what Elbow has observed is true about the Elementary teachers in this portion of the seminar is true, and that the teachers, because of their students, are more open-minded regarding play and imagination in the classroom, where does this usually begin to decline in the school system? Do the students in both middle and high school become less needy for imagination and play when learning or is it due to the perception of the teachers that they should just learn what they need to?

4) Dewey, The Child and the Curriculum (pages 181-82)
“Solution comes only by getting away from the meaning of terms that is already fixed upon and coming to see the conditions from another point of view, and hence in a fresh light.”

This is something that we as teachers must take into consideration not only when having an in-class discussion but also in evaluating papers, the way in which we interpret something may not coincide with what our students think of something, and we must be willing to not necessarily throw away what we believe to be the correct version of the interpretation but to be open-minded enough to try and see it from the student’s point of view. If not, we run the chance of being stuck in an education rut and possibly stunting the views of our students with our own.

Question on the reading: On page 186 at the top, Dewey writes, “ …Hence the moral: ignore and minimize the child’s individual peculiarities, whims, and experiences. They are what we need to get away from. They are to be obscured or eliminated. As educators our work is precisely to substitute for these superficial and casual affairs stable and well-ordered realities; and these are found in studies and lessons.” What does everyone think about that statement?